Chap. VI. STRAITENED FOR PROVISIONS. 133 



Tette two days after the rest of the party, with nothing but 

 the fibre of the meat left, the fat, melted by the blazing sun, 

 haying all run down his back. This path was soon made a 

 highway for slaving parties by Captain Eaposo, the Com- 

 mandant. The journey nearly killed our two active young 

 friends ; and what the slaves must have since suffered on it, 

 no one can conceive ; but slaving probably can never be con- 

 ducted without enormous suffering and loss of life. 



A series of magnetical observations, for ascertaining the dip 

 and declination of the needle, was made by Charles Living- 

 stone at Dakanamoio Island, as others had been made before 

 at Expedition Island and at Tette ; after which the ship 

 left for the Kongone. All our provisions had been expended,, 

 except tea and salt pork ; but fowls, beans, and mapira 

 meal could be purchased from the natives. This meal does 

 not, however, agree with the European stomach ; and wheaten 

 flour, in some form or other, is indispensable to the white 

 man's health in Africa. Our ingenious first or leading stoker,, 

 Eowe, prepared mapira meal in many ways ; at first he simply 

 baked it pure, then tried a little pork gravy with it ; next 

 he mixed bananas, and finally bananas and cloves ; but in 

 whatever form the frightful Shire biscuit was baked, the 

 same inevitable result ensued, gnawing heartburn throughout 

 the entire process of digestion. It would therefore be ad- 

 visable for missionaries and traders to secure a constant 

 supply of wheat ; and that could as easily be done by them 

 as by the Portuguese, if only the proper season were selected 

 for sowing it. April and May, the beginning of the cold 

 weather, are the months in which no rain need be expected 

 to fall; and irrigation must be resorted to, as at the Cape, 

 for which there are abundant facilities. If wheat is sown 

 in the rainy season, the crop runs all to stalk. Men of 



